Thursday, December 14, 2017

Interactive Map of the Southern Sky

The Australian National University has released the most detailed interactive map of the southern sky. The Southern Sky Viewer allows you to explore nearly 300 million stars and galaxies that can be seen from the southern hemisphere.

The map is made from images captured by a specially-built, wide-field survey telescope at Siding Spring Observatory near Coonabarabran. The basemap is made up of 70,000 ultra-high-resolution images, which means that you can zoom-in on the map to examine stars, nebula and galaxies in close detail.

The map doesn't appear to include an option to link to specific views on the map. However the map does include a search option which allows you to search for features by name or by position. Try searching for these: